Etherpad-lite sources and instructions are available here : https://github.com/Pita/etherpad-lite

On our server, here is how I installed it.

• Create a system user, unable to login, with a home directory in /srv/etherpad/

sudo adduser --system --home /srv/etherpad/ --disabled-password etherpad

• Download sources and untar/unzip in /srv/etherpad
• Change the owner

sudo chown -R etherpad:nogroup /srv/etherpad/

• Install nodejs-sqlite3

sudo apt-get install node-sqlite3

• Run config script

cd /srv/etherpad/
sudo -u etherpad bin/installDeps.sh

• Edit config file settings.json

settings.json

  "ip": "127.0.0.1",
  "port" : 9001,
  [...]
  "dbType" : "sqlite",
  //the database specific settings
  "dbSettings" : {
                   "filename" : "../var/sqlite.db"
                 },
  [...]
  "loglevel": "WARN"
 

• Configure Varnish

  backend etherpad
  {
  .host = "127.0.0.1";
  .port = "9001";
  }
  [...]
  if (req.http.host == "pad.fabelier.org")
  {
      set req.backend = etherpad;
  }

• Create the init.d script from the debian skeleton :

  [...]
  PATH=/sbin/:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
  DESC="Etherpad-lite"
  NAME=etherpad-lite
  DAEMON=/srv/etherpad/bin/run.sh
  DAEMON_ARGS=""
  PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
  SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$NAME
  USER=etherpad
  
  # Exit if the package is not installed
  [ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
  
  # Read configuration variable file if it is present
  #[ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
  
  # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
  . /lib/init/vars.sh
  
  # Define LSB log_* functions.
  # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
  # and status_of_proc is working.
  . /lib/lsb/init-functions
  
  #
  # Function that starts the daemon/service
  #
  do_start()
  {
          # Return
          #   0 if daemon has been started
          #   1 if daemon was already running
          #   2 if daemon could not be started
          start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --chuid $USER:nogroup --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
                  || return 1
          start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --background --chuid $USER:nogroup --exec $DAEMON -- \
                  $DAEMON_ARGS \
                  || return 2
          # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
          # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
          # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
  }
  [...]

• Start the daemon :

sudo /etc/init.d/etherpad-lite start

And now, Etherpad is available here : http://pad.fabelier.org

Enjoy, write and share :)